In 1968, I was offered the opportunity to prepare a brief survey of resources and prospects for quantitative research in Latin American History by the ad hoc Committee on Quantitative Data of the American Historical Association. I was at first charged with treatment of the whole period 1500-1960, but the willingness of John TePaske to undertake a lion's share of the task ended in limiting my responsibility to 'only' the 19th and 20th centuries. The results of that survey, as indeed those of

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... essor TePaske's work, are available in the collection of papers edited by Val R. Lorwin and Jacob Price, The Dimensions of the Past. In the notes which follow I will try to avoid repeating any of the presentation in that work and will instead try to build a bridge between that effort of five years ago and developments in this field of research in the past few years.